La Joueuse de Go Review

Well, I finally read it. After about a year avoiding this
painful chore, I found a used copy and decided to buy it, since it
would only set me back the price of a cappuccino (about 3 dollars).

My apprehension had been based on reading the first page which allowed
me to categorize this book as a typical French "intellectual" novel,
that is, totally humorless and unselfconscious in its pompous pursuit
of "serious" issues (Death, Joyless Sex, etc.) and meant to be
consumed like medicine, which, as everyone knows, must taste bad to
work. For Americans unfamiliar with French culture, the US equivalent
would be art house films (not movies) in which famous actors take on
low paying roles playing serial killers with white trash accents in
order to get a shot at an Academy Award.

And it does work! The book won its award, Le Prix Goncourt des
Lyceens, confirming its place in the Pantheon of contemporary French
literature. I'm not sure which lyceens (High School students) were
nominated to choose the winner, but I conjecture that the vast
majority of unliterary youths would prefer Manga Hikaru no Go over
this book, and I would agree with them. Comic books have a wide
appeal in France, perhaps as a reaction to the distasteful French
literary genre, since "BD" (Bandes Dessinees) are serious, funny, and
entertaining, that is, exactly what makes good literature.

For what follows, it is important to note that author Shan Sa is of
Chinese origin, but wrote the book in French, so her book can be
judged by the most rigorous standard (as opposed to translations to be
considered below). The book has been translated into English where it
is known as "The Girl who Played Go," as well as other languages, but
I haven't read any of these, so I don't know to what extent my
comments carry over.

Now for the book. It takes place in Manchuria during the war between
China and Japan in the 1930's. The author chose to tell her story from
both points of view, with chapters alternating between a 16 year old
Chinese girl and a Japanese officer. The action takes place in a
relatively modest town in Manchuria in which the girl goes to high
school, has affairs with boys, and regularly plays go in the town
square. However, this fairly conventional life is completely upset as
faces the conflict first hand, with tragic consequences. In fact,
nothing much good happens to the poor girl, as befits a French novel
searching for an award. The Japanese officer can speak fluent
Mandarin, so is chosen to infiltrate Chinese circles by playing go in
the town square. There the two meet and play a series of games. While
both tell their story, they never really speak to each other, until
the very end.

The short chapters and alternation between points of view make for
easy reading, and the girl's story seems like a fairly faithful
description of life at that time and place (write about what you
know!). On the other hand, the officer's story is an insipid
litany of Japanese cliché's (honor, duty, sacrifice, earthquakes,
geishas) and I felt like I was reading supplementary chapters of Shogun
(don't write about what you don't know!).

The style is fairly annoying, as the poetic tone is set by use of
unanswerable questions such as: "where is the sun's grave?" To be
fair, that part actually sounds pretty good in French: "le soleil,
cramoisi, tombe, tombe. Ou se situe le tombeau du soleil ?" Worse is
the constant juxtaposition of positive and negative in order to toe
the line with serious French literature: "dreaming increases my
melancholy," "mathematical abyss," "to do is to die, to die is to do,"
etc. But nowhere is this more evident and distasteful than in the
explicit description of sex acts (but hey, it makes for a couple of
"hot" pages). These must be joyless but intense with a hackneyed
combination of pain and pleasure: "as soon as I enter her a voluptuous
suffering takes hold of me..."

But the most incongruous aspect of the book is the use of footnotes to
explain any term referring to Oriental culture. I'm not an expert on
novels with poetic pretensions, but it seems to me that you should
sustain subtlety by leaving it up to the reader to pick up the
literary and historical allusions. To give you an idea of what I'm
talking about even "ninja" deserves its explanatory footnote! However,
as will be seen below, she didn't catch everything. Or is it they? I
wonder whether this book, a probable best seller due to the author's
previous success, was not worked over by editors who decided to make
it more accessible. But then again, that doesn't seem right either,
see below. To make things clear, I should say that I realize that I am
explaining the technical terms used here, but my motivation is to
write as clear a review as possible not a work of fiction.

OK, now let's get to the go aspect which was my only reason for
reading this book. My first impression was not too negative, since she
gives a fairly accurate description of people playing outside (later
she correctly points out that such a venue is not very productive for
picking up sensitive information about the war since people only care
about their games). This changed a little when I read the second
chapter and figured out that the narrative would alternate between
Chinese and Japanese viewpoints. That's because it occurred to me that
it would have been more clever for the Chinese narrator to refer to
Weiqi, the Chinese name for go, and the Japanese narrator to use the
Japanese term Go. I think that would have fit in well, but Shan Sa
probably never considered it and it is her book after all.

However, things rapidly deteriorated. Early in the book, we find out
that the girl learned go from her cousin, who, at 20 years old, is an
extremely strong player who was invited by the Emperor of Manchuria
(Pu Yi as in the movie "The Last Emperor") due to his skill at the
game. Later on, the girl beats him in an extremely important game, no
handicap being mentioned. I know that China was not up to Japanese
standards back in the 1930's, but still, the top Chinese go players of
the time were comparable to medium ranked Japanese professionals,
which would make this girl the strongest woman player in the
world. This in itself would be fine. Another clue that she is very
strong is that she beats a shopkeeper giving him an 8 stone
handicap. Since this person must be an older adult, and go is a
popular game in China, he should be around intermediate strength at
least, which would put her at strong amateur dan level. I'm sure that
most go players would agree with me when I say that such progress is
possible only with an enormous time investment, the work involved
being comparable to obtaining a Masters or Ph.D. degree. However,
nothing of the sort is ever mentioned in the book. When not playing,
she never seems to give any thought to go. To seal the matter, she
refers to her game in the first chapter as her 100th victory. Compare
that with the go proverb "lose your first 50 games as quickly as
possible." If I'm not being clear, let me just say that it seems
hardly possible for someone to achieve such a level without having
played on the order of 10,000 games. For a more careful rendering of a
female game playing prodigy, check out the book "The Queen's Gambit,"
by Walter Tevis ("The Hustler" and "The Man who Fell to Earth" are his
more famous oeuvres).

OK, you may say that I'm splitting hairs and you can ignore what I
just wrote, I have much better stuff later on. But the cousin
character started me thinking. Go Seigen, considered to be one of the
strongest players of all time, was born Wu Qin-Yang in China in 1914,
which would make him almost exactly the same age as her cousin. At age
12, Go Seigen was one of the strongest players in Peking with an
estimated strength of professional 4 dan and at age 14 he moved to
Japan to pursue a phenomenal go career. Now, given the book's dual
Chinese/Japanese outlook on the war and the use of go as a metaphor
for the conflict, I find it difficult to ignore this contemporary
person's existence. Of course, that can be explained away by saying
that it would be the subject of a totally different book, and I would
respond by saying that this other book would be much more
interesting. As a matter of fact, Go Seigen's story seems to have
loosely inspired the 1982 movie "The Go Masters" in which Japanese and
Chinese go players interact during the China Japan war (see
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089594/ ). In my opinion, that movie got it
all pretty much right, as opposed to this book, which gets it all
wrong.

So, after reading about 100 pages, I was fairly disappointed with the
book's treatment of the game. However, I soon realized that Shan Sa
knows almost nothing about go. All she knows are the basic
rules, e.g., as explained to her before playing a casual game, and has
seen people playing the same way that people see the Tour de France
passing by their house. Now, I may be somewhat of a snob, but I do not
expect her to know arcana like "The Carpenter's Square is
Ko" or even elementary stuff like the attach and extend joseki
(the first opening tactic you learn as a beginner). I do
expect her to know something about the game's history and its
personalities, at least what a person can find out in a couple of
hours by doing an internet search, or by looking things up in an
encyclopedia.

It was on page 149 that I finally realized the awesome extent of Shan
Sa's ignorance. In a footnote, she explains that black starts the
game, but that white is given five and a half point compensation
(the technical term is komi) at the end of the game. Say what?? Shan, or
Sa, however one calls you, when did people start using the five and a
half point komi? Not too hard a question because a 15 seconds
internet search reveals that it was in the 1955 Oza tournament. Prior to
that, at most four and a half points had been used. Did
people even play with komi back in 1935? Apparently so, as some
Japanese tournaments started using it in 1929-1931. I find it
hard to believe that this practice had percolated down to casual
Manchurian games within a few years. I find it easy to believe that Shan
Sa's knowledge of the rules is minimal and that she never for a second
suspected that these could have evolved over the years, despite
evidence to the contrary, see below.

Here is further demonstration of Shan Sa's overwhelming ignorance. The
first thing that jumps out at the reader is her idiosyncratic
nomenclature for go equipment: the go board is referred to as a
"damier" which literally means "checkerboard" (to be completely
explicit, a board on which you play the game of checkers) and the
stones are "pions" which literally means "pawns" though this term is
formally correct since "pion" describes a generic piece of any game,
e.g., the pieces in snakes and ladders. However, French does have the
more appropriate term "plateau" for "board" (it does not refer to a
specific game which is not go) if one is unwilling to use the Japanese
term "go ban" which is how this is usually referred to in
France. Likewise, there appears to be no reason for using "pion"
instead of the correct term "pierre," that is, "stone." As a footnote,
careful readers will have noted the book's one time use of the term
"go ban" with nary an explanatory footnote.*

The book's terminology has already been noted by French go players,
but I believe that I have discovered why Shan Sa uses these incorrect
terms! You see, it all comes from the book "The Master of Go" by
Kawabata Yasunari, which, it turns out, has an incredibly poor French
translation as far as go is concerned. Yup, this book uses the terms
"damier" and "pion" for the board and stones. Since this must be the
only other French work using this incorrect terminology, the
mystery is solved. As a bonus, one can also confidently conjecture
that Shan Sa's knowledge of go almost entirely consists of her reading
this one book.

Just a little more to convince you of the horror of this translation.
It all starts badly with the title "Le Maitre ou le tournoi de Go,"
that is, "The Master or the Go Tournament." Now anyone who knows about
this book also knows that it is about the retirement match of the last
hereditary Honinbo (the last representative of the institutionalized
go of pre Westernized Japan) consisting of a single game against one
opponent. On the other hand, a tournament, by definition, consists of
more than one game against more than one player, because the "tour" in
tournament refers to a turnover of players. This mistake is
continually repeated in the book, as other matches against a single
player are also referred to as tournaments.

There are other amusing mistakes. For example, the Kitani character
(the real name of the go master's challenger) is talking about his 4
year old daughter who has learned to "put pieces in check." This is
undoubtedly a translation of Japanese technical term "atari" which has
no adequate Western equivalent so is the term which has been adopted
(make that "dansoo" if you defer to the current Korean hegemony).
This was instead translated as "check" in analogy with chess, but this
is clearly wrong because in chess you only put the king in check. A
correct translation is simply: "threaten to capture pieces" or the
more natural and self explanatory: "she knows how to capture." Kitani
goes on to say that he played his six year old daughter a game "giving
her a 9 point handicap." Obviously, this is supposed to be: "giving
her a 9 stone handicap," a huge advantage, as opposed to 9 points
which could only mean a 9 point reverse komi worth less than a 2 stone
handicap putting his 6 year old daughter at a professional level. To
remove any possibility of a typo, the go master's response is: "9
points, that is quite remarkable."

These mistakes are a shame, because Kawabata was an amateur player and
was chosen to cover the actual game by the newspaper sponsoring the
match. The accuracy consistent with strong play and journalistic
reporting should have been reflected in the technical aspects of the
translation. However, I consider such translation errors to be more
forgivable than Shan Sa's mistakes because the job of translation is
just that, a job, and working for probable little pay with possible
strict deadlines makes such oversights understandable. However, one
wants to believe that Shan Sa was writing due to personal creative
motivation and would not depreciate her work in order to satisfy time
constraints.

Some might say that the inaccuracies I bring up do not discount a book
and are the author's poetic license. In Moby Dick, didn't Melville
finally decide after a 50 page discussion that whales are fish and not
mammals? I admit that some of my objections can be explained away. For
example, there are the games played between the girl and the Japanese
officer. These are strange because hardly a game finishes. On each
occasion, the girl has to leave early, and she writes down the
position on a piece of paper so that they can resume play later on. I
don't have a lot of real life go playing experience, but I've never
heard of a casual game being adjourned like this. I'm also not sure
what kind of go supplies were available in Manchuria in 1935, so I
don't know if score sheets were accessible (maybe she got some from
her cousin and I suppose you can draw some up easily enough). Also,
if you have to leave right away, I don't see you spending another 15
minutes to write down the positions of some 200 stones. In any case,
these are moot points, because if the players were at the high level
as can be deduced from the text, they wouldn't need a score sheet to
remember the position.

The real point is that, since the girl and the officers are destined
to fall in love, it is important that the result of the games are
suppressed, in order to minimize the confrontational aspect of the
game. The score sheet is just a literary device to achieve this.

Shan Sa's description of the games can also be considered poetic license,
though the arbitrary quality is consistent with vivid descriptions
people make of things they completely fail to understand. One is
treated to ravings about endless spirals, or something of that nature
(I am making an effort to forget these offensive passages).

Despite this, the komi and terminology mistakes are just too serious
to discount. They clearly show that she has made almost no effort
investigating the game in her title, and pays little attention to
detail. Since effort and attention to detail characterize the game, it
shows that she has not only failed to capture the facts of the game,
but its spirit.

The conclusion is clear. Shan Sa wanted to write a tragic love story
set during the China Japan war, and after reading "The Master of Go,"
decided that the game would be the thread to tie her story
together. Apart from reading this one book, her go experience was
limited to casual observation of people playing in parks and having
the basic rules explained to her but she made no further effort to
know anything more. The easy way to avoid catastrophic errors would
have been to ask some go player to check out her manuscript and anyone
familiar with the go scene in France will know that it isn't very hard
to find strong erudite players willing to do this for little or no pay
(this seems to discount the editors as responsible for the promiscuous
footnotes).

For me, the most egregious blunder is failing to make sure that what
she wrote was consistent with what she knew. She forgot that the game
in the Master of Go, played in 1938 (after her story ends), finishes
with a 5 point win for black. Eh, San, no half points there. And, if
you don't remember the result of the game, what are you left with?
Answer: "La Joueuse de Go" in which games are left unfinished, if they
disturb the story.

* Though it is hard to believe that anyone who doesn't know what a
ninja is will know about go bans.

Well that's my review. Sorry I can't say anything more positive. My
sincere hope for this book is that it gets made into a movie and that
some high powered producer gives it the High Concept treatment, kind
of like this: "Hey, we can combine the intellectual aspect of "A
Beautiful Mind" (that was just a reworked version of ``"Shine" and the
public and the critics ate it up! Didn't the guy play go in the
movie? Sam get back to me on that!) with the oriental Matrix-like
special effects of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and make a
mint. Those other movies won Academy Awards, right, so this should be
a clean sweep."